Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-235"
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"en.20001025.10.3-235"2
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". – As one or two honourable Members may know, I had been due to attend, alongside Javier Solana and Bodo Hombach of the Stability Pact, the special summit of south-east European leaders in Skopje today, which has been organised by President Trajkovski to welcome Yugoslavia back into the family of south-east European nations. But I told President Trajkovski that much as I would have liked to have attended, I needed to be here in this Parliament today, demonstrating democratic accountability in action. I have had several debates and it has been a pleasure to take part in them. But I am pleased to be able to report back to the House on my visit to Yugoslavia yesterday and on Monday. Like many honourable Members, I had long hoped for the chance to report on such a visit and on our efforts to build ties with a democratic Belgrade. Many of us have been surprised and inspired by the triumphant return of democracy to Serbia in recent weeks. I guess we should not have been surprised that democracy always wins in the end.
Let me just say a word about my meeting with President Kostunica and the emergency assistance package that we are finalising for Serbia. I set out for President Kostunica our determination to provide assistance to Serbia as rapidly as possible. I was impressed by his commitment to democracy and made very much aware of the huge challenge he faces in consolidating democracy in Serbia, especially in the run-up to the Serbian elections. I made clear to him our willingness to be as helpful as possible. I applauded the approach he had taken at Biarritz and during his recent visit to Sarajevo, in particular his willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina without delay. Others will have seen the comments he made during a recent CBS interview.
It seems to me that President Kostunica has made an impressive start in formidably difficult circumstances that few of us predicted a few months ago. He deserves a certain amount of political elbow-room, as he tackles those problems and consolidates his position, and all the practical support we can muster.
That is why we have moved fast to put together a large-scale emergency assistance programme for Serbia. Our priorities which have been drawn up, following close consultation with democratic leaders in Belgrade, are to provide help, above all, with energy supplies as well as with medicines and possibly with food. As part of the same package we will extend country-wide our highly successful Schools for Democracy programme which for some months now has been providing basic improvements to schools in municipalities which were run by the opposition. Now we will do that Serbia-wide.
We are going to launch a new programme called Towns for Democracy to provide basic municipal improvements and services and we are going to reinforce our support for the media and civil society in this critical phase.
It is clear that Serbia faces a formidably difficult winter, especially on the energy front. We are going to do everything we can to alleviate the problems but it will still be tough because Milosevic has left Serbia's new leaders with a spectacular shambles.
On energy we are looking urgently to extend our Energy for Democracy programme across Serbia. In particular we are envisaging shipping in diesel and heating fuel, both to keep the power plants running and to fuel district heating plants. We will operate mainly through the municipalities, as we did last year under our pioneering Energy for Democracy initiative.
I had an extremely useful meeting with President Kostunica and many of the mayors to discuss priorities.
I hope I have made it clear what a formidable task we face. We will have to work with others and, despite our efforts, Serbia faces a difficult period. But we are working flat out to get our help on the ground as rapidly as possible, which means from the second half of November.
The people of Serbia know that, from now on, they do not have to face the future alone but with the staunch support of the European Union and the entire family of European democracies at their side.
It was clear from my meetings with the mayors and others that expectations of the European Union are very high. We must not disappoint them. I hope there will be rapid agreement in the Commission and in the management committee on the programmes we have in mind so that deliveries can indeed start in the second half of November.
The European Union made abundantly clear before the elections which took place just a month ago today that democratic change in Yugoslavia would mean a radical shift in the European Union's policy towards that country. What a difference a month can make. In the summer I reported to this House about a Serbia that was an outcast among European nations, about the repression of the brave, independent media, about our support for the opposition. Today, although it is early days, the opposition are in government and the independent media suddenly find that they are no longer embattled and alone but in the vanguard of a new effort to create a truly open and pluralistic media for the whole country.
The people of Serbia will not understand if bureaucracy stands in their way and nor will I. We simply must get moving very fast indeed. Let me make a further very important point: none of the assistance that I have described is at the expense of our efforts elsewhere in the region. I and, I believe, ministers in the General Affairs Council are acutely aware of the European Union's obligations to Croatia, to Bosnia-Herzegovina, to Albania, to FYROM and to the people of Kosovo and to Montenegro. We are not going to relax our efforts elsewhere in the region. If anything, we are going to redouble them.
That was one reason why I visited Podgorica yesterday, my third visit since March and the first time I was able to fly in with a visa from Belgrade. I discussed our considerable assistance programme with President Djukanovic. We have given EUR 55 million to Montenegro this year in recognition of the pressure that Montenegro was under from the Milosevic regime and the brave democratic path that it has taken in the last three years. I informed the president and prime minister of our plans to extend the activities of the European Reconstruction Agency to Montenegro and I informed them, in the light of the welcome democratic change in Belgrade about our proposals to extend the full benefits of our recently implemented asymmetric trade measures for the region to Montenegro as well as to Serbia. This will be a big boost to Montenegro's economy.
I listened to the views of the prime minister and the president on recent developments and on relations between Montenegro and Serbia. I made clear to them and to the press that I had been impressed by President Kostunica's commitment to democracy and the formidable challenge he faced in consolidating it. The European Union was determined to do all it could to help, which was why we were putting together a substantial emergency package for this winter.
Speaking as a friend of Montenegro, I said that when elected democratic leaders held out the hand of friendship it was very important to grasp it. I underlined my view that with Milosevic gone, remaining problems should be resolved through a process of rational and calm dialogue displaying understanding of others' points of view, a certain generosity of spirit and a degree of patience. (These are attributes that have not always been widely available in the region in the last decade – I understate the point.) Now a new generation of leaders was in power who want to do things differently, I concluded.
Let me just finish today by saying that this year began with democratic change in Zagreb and this autumn we have seen much hoped-for democratic change take root in Belgrade. There is still much to do. Democracy, although I believe it to be irreversible, is still young and fragile in Serbia. What we have now before us is the best prospect for a generation of building lasting peace and prosperity across the whole of south-east Europe – the chance truly to draw a line under the traumas of the recent past and to look to the future, a future in Europe.
The European Union is ready for that task and stands ready to do all in its power to deliver on the hopes of so many whose lives have been blighted by the horrors the Milosevic regime inflicted inside and outside the borders of Serbia. It is an enormous challenge, but this is the challenge for which all of us have been working for so long. Now we have a duty to rise to it.
From the moment the people of Serbia made their democratic will clear and from the moment they insisted it should be respected, the European Union has been as good as its word. Barely four days after the democratic transition on 5 October, European Union foreign ministers announced the lifting of sanctions and the immediate repeal of the oil embargo and the flight ban. They announced the extension of the European Reconstruction Agency to Serbia and Montenegro. They underlined our willingness to press ahead with clearing the Danube and to provide the resources to do so. They asked the Commission to draw up proposals to extend our recently announced trade preferences for the Balkans to the whole of Yugoslavia. They expressed a wish for Member States to re-establish or normalise diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia at the earliest opportunity. They underlined the willingness of the European Union to contribute to the institutional and economic rebuilding of the FRY and they extended an invitation to President Kostunica to attend the informal European Council in Biarritz and to participate in the regional summit that the Presidency is organising and which is to be hosted by the Croatian Government in Zagreb on 24 November.
The day after the foreign ministers' meeting, Foreign Minister Védrine representing the presidency, flew to Belgrade to inform President Kostunica in person of the measures decided by the European Union to honour the promises it had made to the people of Serbia during the election campaign. The same day, just five days after 5 October, a team of Commission officials arrived in Belgrade to discuss with President Kostunica's advisers an urgent, short-term assistance package.
Later that week, the European Commission proposed to the European Council at Biarritz that the budgetary authority, including this Parliament, should approve an emergency package of assistance to Serbia worth EUR 200 million, 180 million of it mobilised from the emergency reserve. In the last few days, a team from our Reconstruction Agency has been in Belgrade, working out in close partnership with President Kostunica's team, and in particular with Professor Labus and the G17 group of economists, as well as with other donors, precisely what assistance we can deliver and how we can ensure it arrives on the ground in Serbia as rapidly as possible in the next few weeks, given the onset of winter and given the upcoming Serbian Republic elections on 23 December.
Following these initial missions I went myself to Belgrade on Monday and yesterday afternoon I visited Podgorica. In Belgrade I met President Kostunica and held a separate meeting with him and some 80 mayors from democratic municipalities. I visited the headquarters of the students' resistance movement, and met the brave independent journalist, Marislav Filipovic, jailed by Milosevic for telling the truth and recently freed under President Kostunica. I met with Professor Labus and his colleagues of the G17 group of economists and with colleagues from the World Bank to discuss both short-term help and the longer but vital task of long-term reconstruction, especially institution building and building the rule of law.
I met the Mayor of Belgrade and visited with him a Belgrade school being renovated under the European Commission's Schools for Democracy programme.
I visited the Independent Media Centre, a kind of haven for independent journalists which the European Commission has helped to support; and gave an interview. I also visited the studio of the independent television and radio station, B92, which was harassed by Milosevic and supported amongst others by the European Commission and whose journalists, like other independent journalists, will deserve prominent and flattering mention when the history of the last few weeks in Serbia comes to be written. They were infinitely braver than I have ever had to be.
I also had important meetings with representatives of the democratic opposition of Serbia and with NGOs and representatives of civil society, including the impressive head of the Civic Democratic Alliance, Goran Svilanovic. I briefed European Union heads of mission before my departure to Montenegro where I had meetings yesterday evening with President Djukanovic and Prime Minister Vujanovic."@en1
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